Endless Destiny
by cmartist
Summary: For the perfect soldier, what more is there to do if soldiers are no longer needed? Is there a greater destiny for one who has known nothing but fighting? Sucky summary but then again I wrote this on a whim :p


**Gundam Wing: Endless Destiny**

Just a story that's been plaguing me for a while. I needed to get it out of my system :p

**Prologue**

The figure stood in the shadows as his target walked off the shuttle, waving at the crowd that gathered to welcome her off. Even though several years had passed since the Marimeia incident, unification of the Earth was still taking time and her premier ambassador ensured that it would still remain a possibility. Silently taking in her beauty, he slinks away just as the young woman turns in his direction, her eyes searching the area for his presence.

"Heero," Relena whispers.

W-W-W

Heero Yui, one of the heroes of the Mobile Suit wars and quite possibly the best pilot alive, stood in the abandoned warehouse he had begun to call home these past few months. Even if the war was long over, he didn't feel comfortable with civilian life. Having been trained as nothing but the ultimate soldier, he knew nothing but how to fight and that left him feeling empty and without direction. Settling down in his makeshift bunk, he closes his eyes but shoots out of bed as he hears footsteps approach the doors. Reaching for the gun behind his back, he nearly pulls it out of its holster before recognizing the figure which stood before him. "Relena."

"I haven't seen you in a while, Heero," Relena begins somewhat hesitantly, her feelings for the boy who once promised to kill her still as strong as before. "The war's been over for so long. You don't have to be a soldier anymore."

He looks into her eyes and sees the pain in them; both of then wanting nothing more than to be with each other but he felt that she deserved someone who wasn't a murderer. "Relena, I..." Heero begins before being silenced by warm lips meeting his own. Surrendering into the kiss, he feels disappointed as the kiss seemed to end as quickly as it began, Relena latching on to him like a life preserver.

"You've always been there when I needed you, Heero. Why won't you let me be there for you now?"

For once, he had no monosyllabic answer as the girl slowly disengaged herself from him, a sad smile on her face as she gently caressed his cheek. "I need to go now, Heero. The peace talks will be starting in a while," Relena says sadly. No other words needed to be said as they both knew of the immense responsibility that rested on her shoulders.

As he watched her leave, he brings a hand to his lips, the kiss still fresh in his mind as he recalled Relena's words to him that night against Marimea. _'I don't need to be a soldier anymore. Can I truly give it up? Do I even know how?'_ he muses, wondering if life with Relena was what he truly needed to make him complete. Walking to a secluded section of the warehouse, he lifts a large tarp which hid something many believed no longer existed in the world.

"Zero."

W-W-W

Flying high above the Earth's atmosphere, Heero focused on the data the Zero system fed him as he pushed the reborn Wing Zero through maneuvers that would have torn apart a regular mobile suit. Although the unit had exploded after his last shot at the White Fang headquarters, the frame itself was fairly intact; a testament to the near indestructibility of the Gundanium alloy. Suprisingly, the Zero System had also remained intact and still functioned perfectly as he darted around the debris which now circled the tiny blue planet.

He wondered what Relena would say if she knew he had rebuilt the unit which played such a vital role in establishing the peace they now enjoyed. People had already began to picture the Gundams as legendary even if mobile suits were now something that no longer existed. When he started this project by salvaging the remains of all the Gundam units, he had done so because he knew nothing else but warfare. Relena's latest visit had finally made him think about what to do with his life. Despite all that he had done, she still accepted him for who he was. It was then he decided he would fly Zero one last time to see if he truly didn't need to be a soldier anymore.

Finally able to see the Earth without any explosions in the background or dodging enemy fire, for once Heero closes his eyes without fear of any danger creeping up on him. _'My duty is finally over.' _His reverie is broken though, as Zero's systems start beeping out warning signals. Going over the readouts with a trained eye, he sees a fairly large asteroid headed towards one of the nearby colonies. _'Strange. An asteroid this close should have appeared in the news months ago.'_ Wondering why no defense craft had even been mobilized, he is surprised to see that the chunk of space rock did not appear on any of his conventional systems; only the Zero System showed him the rock even existed. Unsure if the object was real or if Zero was simply malfunctioning, Heero decides that it was better to be safe than sorry.

"Mission...accepted."

Activating Wing Zero's thrusters, the Gundam unit's wings spread out like an angel (1) and zoomed off towards the coordinates where the asteroid was reported.

W-W-W

"Get me the control tower! I want visual verification and the exact coordinates of that asteroid!" yelled Lt. Masashi as the local defense force scrambled to get into their fighters. A supply ship which happened to be in the right place at the right time spotted the asteroid as it was headed towards the colony. Not wanting to scare the populace unnecessarily, the supply ship's pilot contacted the control tower first to verify what he saw. Unfortunately, panic is exactly what set in as the control tower received the news. They had ordered all defense fighters on red-alert as they attempted to verify the asteroid's trajectory and to their worst fears it _was_ headed towards them. _'Over five hundred thousand people,'_ Masashi thought worriedly. _'No way can we evacuate in time.'_ He faced his men, his expression grim as he informed them of their mission.

"Here's the situation. Just a few minutes ago we received reports of an asteroid headed towards our colony." When the men started murmuring worriedly amongst themselves he held up a hand to silence them. "Why didn't we hear about this sooner? The asteroid doesn't appear on any of our scanners. It was by chance that one of our supply ships saw it as it was making its delivery run." The whole room goes quiet as the gravity of the situation finally sinks in but the squadron commander slams his hand on the table which catches the men's attention.

"Listen, the populace don't know about this and even if they did, it would only cause mass panic. No one would be able to evacuate at all." Pressing a few buttons on the table before him, a screen slides down from the ceiling and begins to display the asteroid's trajectory. "Based on the supply ship's report, the asteroid should be in this sector. Our orders are seek and destroy. I don't have to remind you all of what will happen if we fail."

With that, the entire colony's defense force scrambles to action, the general populace unaware of the danger that was fast approaching them.

W-W-W

As Heero approached the station, a strange feeling of danger seemed to wash over him. Activating Wing Zero's visual scanners, he sees several small explosions in the distance, their flash contrasting with the blackness of space. Zooming in on the source, he sees several short range fighters unleashing whatever payload they could carry at the approaching asteroid, the blasts taking out chunks of space rock but the overall effect was negligible in comparison to the asteroid's size. No longer caring if he was seen or not, Heero flies straight at the asteroid, the twin buster rifle ready in the Gundam's hands. Releasing the rifle's safety protocols, he activates the Zero system as the world's 'ultimate' mobile suit flies towards its final mission.

W-W-W

"We're not doing enough damage! Do you have any word on the fusion bomb that's supposed to be sent to us!" Masashi lead yells over the comm.

"They're still 25 minutes away, sir!" one of the pilots responds as he continues to unload his ammunition into the asteroid.

Masashi gives a snort of disgust as their efforts don't seem to have any effect. The asteroid would collide in less than that amount of time. "Don't let up! We can't let it reach the colony no matter what!" Unleashing another volley of missiles which explode harmlessly against the though surface of his target. Seeing the uselessness of his ship's armaments, he starts activating the self-destruct system and prepares his ship for a collision course, silently praying his family would be able to carry on without him. Just as he is about to punch the afterburners, a giant blur of white zooms past him, snow white feathers gleaming against the darkness around him. _'Was that...an angel?'_ Wondering if the stress was getting to him, he prepares to inform his men of the kamikaze plan when the radio flares to life.

W-W-W

"Attention all ships. Clear the area now." Heero orders as he zooms past the small defense fighters. At first the ships don't react to his command but soon they recognize the identity of the winged mobile suit before them and scramble to get away; the Gundam raising two large guns at the approaching asteroid.

"Target...locked," Heero says monotonously as the small defense fighters zoom past him, the Zero system feeding tactical data directly into his brain and giving him the scenario which would provide the outcome he desired. As the twin buster rifle begins to charge, a sudden flash from the Zero system shows Heero a scene he thought he would never see again; dozens, if not hundreds, of mobile suits clashed in endless waltz of destruction. The image fades almost as fast as it came, replacing itself with various scenarios and options for where to target the asteroid. Choosing the optimal breaking point, Heero pulls the trigger on his joystick, unleashing the twin beams of destruction which tear into the approaching asteroid and illuminating the space around it. At first the beam fails to penetrate the dark matter that composed the spinning rock causing Heero to wonder if Zero had made a mistake. A few moments later his worry was alleviated as the attack bursts through the asteroid, multiple spider cracks appearing on its surface as it begins to disintegrate. "Mission...completed," he whispers to himself, a small hint of a smile forming on his face. Turning around the mobile suit, he starts to head towards Earth but Zero suddenly started blaring every which alarm it could as an immense force shook the Gundam unit.

Outside, the asteroid had revealed itself to be nothing more than a shell for something else. As the debris separated itself from the artifact, long dormant energies started to flow around the device as it locked onto the object which had activated it. Finding Wing Zero, it started to perform the function it had been designed for so long ago.

Activating the external sensors, Heero could see a huge ring behind Zero, a cacophony of colors in the center which seemed to be pulling him in. Setting the wing verniers to maximum output, the mobile suit begins to shake violently as it struggled to reach escape velocity. Whatever the thing was, it easily overpowered his thrusters as Wing Zero was drawn closer and closer. Gritting his teeth as the g-forces threatened to shake Wing Zero apart, his eyes widen in shock as the Zero System suddenly feeds dozens of images into his mind. He could see mobile suits, designs of which he had never seen before fighting all around him.

"No...not again," he whispers as he sees a little girl in a shuttle destroyed by a particle beam, another innocent victim of war. As more and more images forced their way into his mind, he blacked out from the sheer information overload that Zero was feeding him. Without a conscious pilot, Wing Zero plunges into the swirling hole behind it, disappearing without a trace.

Having fulfilled its function, the device shuts down with nary a sound, the lights surrounding it fading into the darkness. Even the momentum it had seemed to suddenly vanish as it simply stood dead in space. Unless one was looking really hard, it would have almost been invisible save for the girl which stood atop the ring. The fact that a girl was standing there would have been puzzling enough but the fact that she wasn't wearing a space suit would have caused greater confusion.

Looking down at the device, she kneels and gives it a gentle touch, smiling briefly she whispers like a mother would a child. "You've done well. I'm sorry for making you work after all this time but he is needed." Floating away from the artifact, her long golden hair shines briefly in the sunlight as she disappears in swirl of snow-white feathers.

On Earth, Relena looks up at the sky briefly as the two ambassadors argued in front of her, her instincts telling her something was dreadfully wrong. _'Heero...'_

W-W-W

The shaking of Wing Zero awoke the sleeping pilot as warning systems flashed all around him. Shaking off his stupor, Heero reads each display with practiced ease, assessing the situation with machine-like efficiency.

'_Temperature increasing. Structural integrity being compromised. Angle of decent too steep.'_ That last one got his attention as he activated the Gundam's external cameras. What he saw surprised even him. Fast approaching him was the Earth. How he had gotten to there he had no idea.

'_Wasn't I just at Colony L6?'_ he wonders briefly. Pulling back on the stick, his eyes widen with shock as the Gundam fails to respond. Looking at the other display panels, Heero raises his eyebrow in puzzlement as the indicators all point to the fusion reactor just barely producing enough power to move the suit.

'_This isn't good. Zero will burn up at this rate,'_ he thinks worriedly. Diverting all power to the wing verniers, he sets the wings to atmospheric reentry mode, hoping they would be enough. Gundanium was strong but extreme heat was its main weakness. As the wings struggled to wrap themselves around the blue and white mobile suit, Heero could feel the cockpit get hotter as the environmental controls shut down from lack of power. Worried that Zero would just burn up on reentry, he lets out a small sigh of relief as he feels the temperature go down, the wings having fully covered the mobile suit. Bringing the navigational systems back online, they told him his current trajectory would take him within a few miles of a small archipelago. _'Hopefully no one will see the mobile suit,'_ Heero thinks to himself as he tries to change his course with the limited online systems he had. Picking what appeared to be an abandoned section of the main island, he diverts some power to the secondary thrusters and hopes for the best.

Glowing bright red as Wing Zero penetrated the atmosphere, short bursts from its thrusters change it's heading ever so slightly, now pointing it in the direction of the island nation. As the glow finally faded away, the wings opened up allowing the mobile suit to glide down towards the shore line.

'_This is going to be rough,'_ Heero thinks grimly as he knew there wasn't enough power for a controlled ground landing. As Wing Zero nears the archipelago, the scanners find a small island far from the main island. Deciding it was the best spot to hide the Gundam given the lack of options, he fires the verniers and heads towards the small island. Bracing himself, the whole cockpit shakes as Wing Zero crashes spectacularly off the coast, the mobile suit sinking in the blue water.

As the suit disappears beneath the waves, Heero bursts from the water where Zero sank, his eyes as emotionless as ever as he spares a short look at the sinking unit before swimming towards the shore. Several minutes later, a thoroughly wet and tired Gundam pilot plops down on the white sand, taking deep breaths as he tries to recover his strength.

Even as he closed his eyes, Heero already started formulating a plan of action.

W-W-W

The sun was already starting to set when Heero started to head towards the island. It had taken him some time exploring the island but he estimated that the mainland was within swimming distance (at least as far as his abilities were concerned). _'By my estimates, I should reach the island by nightfall,'_ he thinks to himself, checking all the items he had taken from Zero before it sank. _'Laptop...functional, gun, knife,' _he mentally checks off, thankful he had even decided to pack them in a watertight bag. '_I guess old habits are hard to break_._'_ Strapping the bag to his body, he takes a deep breath and dives into the water, on his way to the mainland.

W-W-W

"Onii-chan! (3) Where are you?" a young girl shouts as she walks along the beach. Tears starting to form in her eyes, she curls up on the sand, her body trembling as she shivered in the cold night air. _'I shouldn't have run so far,'_ she admonishes herself, tears starting to fall from her eyes. She is shaken out of her despair as she hears several splashes in the sea followed by a wet 'plop' in the darkness. "Who...who's there?" she calls out tentatively.

As the moon peeks out from the clouds, she finally sees what caused the sounds she had heard. A few meters in front of her lay a boy not much older than her brother collapsed on the sand. Her situation momentarily forgotten, she runs up to him and gives a hesitant shake on his shoulder. "Hey. Hey, are you ok?" she asks. The boy groans in response which causes her to jump back slightly but seeing that he was still unconscious she shakes his shoulder again. No longer getting any reaction, she starts to panic but a voice in the distance shakes her out of it.

"Mayu! Where are you?"

"Onii-chan!" she calls out. Turning to the sound of the voice, she sees the tell-tale signs of a flashlight in the distance. "I'm over here!" Mayu yells out, hoping her brother would be able to find her. Turning her attention back to the boy, she cradles his head as she tries to wake him up but her eyes widen in fright as she feels him burning with an impossibly high fever.

Shinn lets out a sigh of relief as he hears his sister's voice. "Keep talking, Mayu! I'm coming!" he shouts back. Running towards her voice, he makes sweeping motions with the flashlight until it finally lands on a small figure on the sand. "There you are..." he pauses as he sees tears running down her face and the boy who's head was resting on her lap.

"Onii-chan, we have to help him," she manages to say between sobs.

W-W-W

Heero's eyes shoot open as the first rays of sunlight hit. Sitting up, a massive wave of pain runs through his head like a really bad hangover, a slight groan escaping his lips. His combat senses suddenly go into overdrive as he realizes he was in a room he didn't recognize. Eyes darting around, he sees his bag laid out on a chair along with his clothes neatly folded. Then it hit him.

His clothes were on a chair. Away from him.

The room was pink.

He was naked in bed. A pink frilly bed.

'_...I'm in a girl's room,'_ he deduces logically, wondering how he could have been dragged all the way here. _'Last I remember I was swimming towards the shore when I felt a strange stinging sensation.'_ As he tries to recall what else happened, the door to the room starts to open causing him to reach for the bag reflexively but another wave of nausea and pain hits him which causes him to collapse halfway out of the bed.

"No, you're still not well!" a young voice cries out.

Feeling a pair of small arms lift him (albeit with some effort) into the bed, he sees a young girl, face red as she struggled to get him back in bed. "You..."

"Mayu, you shouldn't try to do it yourself," a second voice admonishes.

'_Mayu, so that's her name,'_ Heero notes to himself as the boy starts to help the young girl.

"Areyouok?Howdidyougetthere?Whywereyouonthebeach?Ihopemyroomisokforyou.Whoareyou?" Mayu starts to tirade, causing her brother to shake his head.

"What she's trying to say is 'who are you and what happened?'" Shinn adds, giving Heero a cautious look.

"My name is Heero Yuy. I...don't remember how I got here," Heero lies. "I remember falling in the water and then trying to swim to shore. After that, nothing, then waking up naked in your sister's bed."

"That's my sister for you," he sighs while giving a nonchalant shrug. "Mayu found you on the beach with a really high fever and when I found her she insisted we bring you back here. I don't know why she didn't think of brining you to the hospital though. You must have been in the sea for hours."

"Youmustbehungry!I'llgogetbreakfast!" Mayu suddenly blurts impossibly fast as she heads out of her room.

Shinn watches her run off as something Heero said finally sinks in. _'naked...in Mayu's bed?'_ "MAAAAYUUUU!" he roars as he chases after his little sister!

As Heero watches him leave, he could hear Mayu's voice counter in the distance.

"But he was wet! You can't get well if you're wearing wet clothes!"

Allowing himself a small but brief smile, his thought turn to one other girl who was just as bubbly as the one who just left, his features darkening upon recalling why she was no longer among the living. _'Time to find out where I am,'_ he thinks to himself.

W-W-W

Over the next few days, Heero had learned a few things about where he was. Apparently he was in a country called Orb, a neutral country, and that Shinn and his sister Mayu were relatively new immigrants to the country, as he found out after their parents had returned from their business trip and discovered their unexpected 'guest.' They had been surprisingly accepting of his presence there, saying that it was the least they could offer to a fellow human in trouble. At first he wondered what in the world Orb was, having never heard about it in any record before, but upon digging further he also discovered that things like OZ, the Earth Alliance and the Sanq kingdom never existed. What puzzled him the most was that the calendar read C.E. 71. Cosmic Era. Searching every record he could hack into revealed nothing about the After Colony age or anything even remotely related to history as he knew it.

'_That device,'_ he muses, recalling the strange machine which pulled him and Zero in. As incredulous as it seemed, the device must have tossed him to the future or to some alternate timeline. It was the only thing that made sense.

"Umm, excuse me, Heero-san?" Mayu pipes up as she sticks her head into the spare room. After being scolded by her brother, the two had moved their guest to another room after he had gotten stronger.

Heero closes his laptop from her prying eyes lest she see what he was researching. "Good morning, Mayu," he responds in his usual monotone, earning him a glaring pout from the girl.

"Heero, what did I say about being so _dry_?" she huffs.

"Sorry," he answers, forcing unused muscles as he gives the girl a small smile. "Thank you again for putting up with me. What can I do for you?" Heero asks.

Before she could open her mouth to reply but Shin suddenly runs in, a frantic look on his face.

"The Earth Alliance is surrounding Orb!"

W-W-W

"Come on Mayu! Shin! Heero!" Asuka senior calls out as they run towards the escape ships. All around them the battle raged on between the Earth Alliance mobile suits and Orb's own formidable army.

Heero brought up the rear, keeping an eye out for any danger as he watched a winged mobile suite dodging the attacks of three other 'Gundams'. _'The pilot is exceptional, but his actions seem raw and uncontrolled,'_ he thinks to himself as the explosions continue to rock the very earth around them. As he follows the family of four, Mayu's phone falls out of her pocket and down the rocky hillside.

"My phone!" she cries out as she struggles against her mother's grasp.

"Don't worry, I'll get it!" Shinn yells as he jumps down after the device.

Heero idly watches the boy slide down the hill when his battle hardened senses suddenly warn if of impending danger. In the blink of an eye, he rushes at the family, yelling for them to jump down the hill.

Mayu was still preoccupied watching Shinn so Heero's cries barely registered with her and her parents. Twin plasma beams lance out from the sky and strike the ground meters away from them, the heat and shockwave of the explosion burning everything in its path. As her life flashed before her eyes, she feels someone tackle her to the ground, the two of them tumbling down the explosion roared around them.

Shinn, who had been climbing back up with the phone, was immediately knocked back by the shockwave. Getting back to his feet, his eyes widen as he sees the devastation before him. "Mayu? Mom? Dad?" he stutters as he walks towards the burnt trees. He collapses to his knees as he sees the broken and bleeding bodies, twisted in unnatural angles which gave no ambiguous hint to their condition. Unable to accept what he saw, Shinn screams to the heavens as the tears start to flow freely, unaware of the two mobile suits that landed behind him.

As the two cockpits open, Orb soldiers disembark from them as they guard the officer who had approached the area on foot. "Hey, kid! You've got to evacuate!" Colonel Todoka says as he approaches the grieving boy.

Shinn doesn't react as the officer gently shakes his shoulder, his grief still overwhelming him as he continues to cry. Curling up in a ball, he starts slamming his fists into the ground when a familiar voice calls out to him.

"Shinn."

Looking up from his fetal position, he sees the older boy, blood pouring down from several wounds and carrying an unconscious Mayu in his arms. "Mayu!" Rushing towards the two, he immediately looks over his sister as tears start to flow anew with relief. "How...?" he starts to ask but Heero stops him by placing the limp girl into his arms.

"Protect Mayu," Heero tells the boy, unaware of how his words would shape the young man's destiny. Running towards one of the mobile suits, he easily knocks down the pilot who was twice his size and commandeers the unit, much to the surprise of Colonel Todoka.

"What the hell are you doing? That's not a toy!" he yells out just as the teen enters the cockpit. His anger turns to surprise as the mobile suit suddenly powers up. Before he could voice his questions, the Astray moves to block a rocket which had been fired from the blue-green Gundam.

"Get Shinn and Mayu away from here _NOW!'_ Heero states, the tone in his voice brooking no argument as he flies off towards the battle.

Colonel Todoka could only watch with shock as the M1 Astray started shooting down the EA mobile suits with apparent ease. Reminding himself to talk to the 'pilot' once this was over, he takes the girl and boy to the evacuation ships, failing to notice the awestruck look the boy had as he was watched the Astray fly off.

-To be continued-

Whew. A bit long for a 'teaser' fic but I just had to write this to get my creative juices flowing.

Notes:

(1) I'm using the Endless Waltz version of Wing Zero since I think It's a bit more appropriate than the TV version (and I think it looks cooler :-p)

(2) I read Gundanium is basically invisible to radar, which is why O.R.B. didn't detect anything when Heero crashed.

(3) Literally 'older brother'. Just thought the Japanese word sounded more appropriate than her yelling out "Shin."

(4) For the scientifically minded, the Gundam Seed Universe uses N-Jammers which basically stop Fission reactions. Wing Zero runs on a _Fusion_ reactor. While theoretically it shouldn't be affected by N-Jammers, for story purposes I wanted it to have a limited effect on Fusion reactions anyway (the reason for which will be explained in later chapters).

(5) For the purists: as far as canon is concerned, Heero did live a 'normal' life after Endless Waltz but the temptation to rewrite him into the CE universe was too much to bear


End file.
